Your daughter having excessive confidence in a skill she has not yet acquired. That's a very web thing. He was quiet for a second. Then did you just call what I did tonight excessive confidence? I called it elaborate.
I think elaborate and excessive confidence are close cousins. I'm going to need a moment, he said. And she could hear the smile in it. Not the polished kind he used in meetings, but the other one. The one that seemed surprised at itself.
The light changed. They crossed. They didn't talk about work. This was something Norah noticed and filed away. They never not talked about work.
It was the water they swam in. The common language between them, but tonight it didn't come up. Not the Western account. Not Diane's comment in the meeting. Not the Q4 review that was 3 weeks out and already making half the team nervous.
Instead, Marcus talked about Lily's school play, which she'd been cast in and was taking with a level of seriousness that apparently alarmed her teacher. And Norah talked about her brother Dany, who'd called that week with news that he was thinking about buying a food truck, which was either a great idea or a catastrophic one. And she genuinely couldn't tell. Is he good at cooking? Marcus asked.
He's decent. He's better at naming things. He's already got three names for the truck and no menu. That's either a very good sign or a very bad sign. That's what I said.
They had reached the Thai place on Wabash. It was still open. It was barely 9 and the lights inside were warm and there was only one table occupied that she could see through the window. A couple in the back sharing something over a candle. Marcus stopped.
Norah stopped. He looked at the restaurant. He looked at her. He didn't say anything. Just raised an eyebrow in that economy of motion way that meant, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" which was a look she knew very well from conference rooms and project reviews in the long stretch of working alongside someone until their shortorthhand becomes its own language.
She said I haven't eaten since noon. I had a granola bar at 4:00. He said that's not food. That's what I told myself. They went in.
The restaurant was small and warm and smelled of lemongrass and something that had been cooking all day. The woman who seated them was apologetic about the proximity of the tables, which were restaurant close, meaning knees almost touching, menus nearly overlapping. Norah said it was fine because it was fine. And Marcus ordered the first round of drinks before she'd finished reading the specials, which he could do because he already knew what she wanted, which was either convenient or deeply something she needed to think about. She decided to put it in the did not yet need to be named category and look at the menu.
Over the first drink, she found out he'd grown up in Cincinnati. Not somewhere she'd have guessed. She'd have said somewhere quieter, more open. But he said Cincinnati was plenty quiet if you knew where to look. And she said she'd take his word for it.
Over the second drink, she told him about Portland. More than the version she told the office, the real one, the months after the nonprofit, where she'd been genuinely lost, 24 years old and good at things, but not sure which things mattered. Working a coffee shop job that she'd been embarrassed about at the time and now thought of with something close to fondness. He listened the way he did everything without interrupting, without filling silences, without the particular kind of listening where you can tell the person is just waiting for their turn to talk. When she finished, he said, "What changed between lost and not lost?" She had to think about it.
I got a project, a real one. Somebody trusted me with something I could fail at the consulting firm, at the nonprofit actually, right before I left. They gave me a real thing to do and I did it and it worked. And then I knew what I was doing or at least what kind of doing I was capable of. He nodded like this made sense to him.
What was your version of that? She asked. He turned his glass once. Lily, I mean that sounds simplistic. It doesn't.
When her mom left, I thought I was going to get it wrong. Everything. I thought the whole thing was going to go wrong because I didn't know what I was doing and I was the only one there. And then I just did it and she was fine. She's fine, he paused.
She's excellent at pool. Norah smiled. She's excellent at pool. She's terrible at pool, he said. And the way he said it was the way people talk about things they love completely.
They stayed until the restaurant started stacking chairs, which was how Norah discovered it was 11:15 and that she had no memory of time passing, which was either a sign of good food or good company. Both probably. She did not feel the need to choose. Outside, the temperature had dropped that Chicago September 5° it saves for 10:00 and she had her jacket all the way on. This time they stood on the sidewalk and there was a moment brief natural that required navigation.
Marcus looked at her. He had his hands in his pockets again. Unhurried, steady. I'm not going to make this complicated, he said. Okay.
She said, I'd like to do this again. Whatever you want to call it, she looked at him in the street light this careful. Patient man who had spent 9 months deciding something and then waited in a parking lot and made two pool shots look like accidents. Who had a daughter who thought she was excellent at things she'd barely tried. Who listened without waiting for his turn to talk.
I'm going to need some ground rules, she said. Name them. Work stays work. Whatever this is, doesn't come into the office. Agreed.
If it stops working, we say so. Neither of us does the slow fade. Absolutely. Agreed. She said, "You have to tell Lily about the pool." The real version.